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Andrew Ashur, the founder and CEO of window cleaning robot startup Lucid Bots, likes to joke that his company is the antithesis of the robotics industry right now.<\/p>\n
While many companies are trying to build humanoids<\/a> or tout demos of their robots dancing and doing flips<\/a>, Lucid Bots\u2019 drones are out in the field making traditionally unsexy and dangerous work, like cleaning windows, safer and more efficient.<\/p>\n \u201cThe sad truth is most are still selling a lot of hype and headlines, and we sell performance on the job site that shows up in our customers, profits, and losses,\u201d Ashur told TechCrunch. \u201cWe\u2019re not just in the lab and simulators. We\u2019ve got dirt under our fingernails, and we\u2019re out on job sites getting work done.\u201d<\/p>\n Charlotte, North Carolina-based Lucid Bots is a full-stack robotics company that sells its Sherpa drones and Lavo robot to cleaning companies to help them on their job sites. The company designed and manufactures its own robots in the U.S. and just raised a $20 million Series B round co-led by Cubit Capital and Idea Fund Partners. This brings its total funding to $34 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n The company plans to use the money for hiring to keep up with demand, although Ashur joked that they\u2019ve run out of parking spots at their manufacturing facility.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have more requests for demos, then we have hours in the day, so we need to scale up capacity and head count,\u201d Ashur said. \u201cAs a founder, when we don\u2019t have enough hours in the day to do all the demos, it gives me a little bit of heartburn.\u201d<\/p>\n Demand from customers and investors wasn\u2019t there in the beginning, Ashur said. It took the company half a decade to ship its first 100 robots, and it took a fair amount of convincing to get VCs to back a robotics founder with a liberal arts background and no robotics experience.<\/p>\n Techcrunch event<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco, CA<\/span> Ashur got the original idea for the company while he was a junior at Davidson College studying economics and Spanish. He happened to walk by a building that was being cleaned by window washers. It was a windy day, and the workers\u2019 swing stage started to knock around and slam into the building.<\/p>\n Watching the harrowing scene made Ashur think about how technology could make this safer.<\/p>\n \u201cBuilt infrastructure is literally the largest asset class in the world, but right now, we\u2019ve got these three compounding issues,\u201d Ashur said. \u201cWe\u2019ve got aging infrastructure, the new infrastructure we\u2019re building is getting bigger and harder to maintain, and, last but not least, we have less and less people willing and able to do the work. We needed to start building drones and robots to bridge that gap.\u201d<\/p>\n Lucid Bots was launched in 2018 and started out as a cleaning company that took contract jobs to learn more about the industry. After two years, and a few cleaning chemical burns, Ashur said they knew what their drone needed to be successful.<\/p>\n Lucid Bots\u2019 sales has gained momentum recently. It took the startup five years to sell 100 units and now it is approaching 1,000. <\/p>\n The company continues to improve its bots and drones in an effort to keep sales ticking along. Data collected by the robots is fed back to the underlying software, which is used to improve both of Lucid Bots\u2019 products. The company is also building a tool that will allow its bots to be used for adjacent categories like painting waterproofing and sealing, among others.<\/p>\n \u201cWe recently waterproofed a massive university stadium that was starting to age, still using the same brain and frame as a Sherpa,\u201d Ashur said. \u201cPart of why we went there is because our existing customers were pulling us there and we were getting, gosh, probably about 50 or so inbound leads a month related to painting and coating and that was before we even began marketing that option.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n